Cardiac Arrest is a critical medical emergency where the heart stops pumping blood around the body. This happened in November of 2021 for Jamie, unless treated immediately it leads to death within minutes. Therefore I had to call for emergency help and start CPR. There are more then 30,000 out of hospital cardiac arrests in the UK each year. The overall survival rate is less than 1 in 10. It was tough waiting for the ambulance to arrive as I had to perform CPR for around 30 minutes. It didn’t seem like 30mins at the time, what I didn’t know is that every minute without CPR and defibrillation reduces the chances of survival by up to 10% and that every 8 minutes someone in the UK dies from coronary heart disease.

After CPR and defibrillation more often than not the patient will suffer a stroke due to lack of oxygen to the brain, I then spent a good 5/6 weeks visiting ICU and Stroke ward, everyday the average stay in ICU is £5k a night. 12months later I was then visiting Southampton for two weeks with preventative work on Jamie’s heart for the future. The accommodation was funded by a heart foundation and was a great help to be so close. The day we came home we were back to A&E with an infection, watching the pain this can cause when it takes hold was not pleasant at all.

I’ve had talking therapies to help support my trauma of that morning back in November 21. Still do this day I find it fascinating that one event (trauma) can hit you like a bullet train so much so that you struggle to carry out simple activities everyday. This needs to be treated as well through therapies, your brain needs to process the ‘stuck’ thoughts and reprocess to make them less traumatic. Finally the summer of 2024 I felt more myself after the help and support of eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing along side some imagery work. It’s been a long road to my and Jamie’s recovery. This year, we give back!

We were lucky, a lot of people aren’t.